


Along Came a Spider

by 2x2verse (agent_florida), Makizushi



Series: Along Came a Spider [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Meet-Cute, Multi, OT4, Other, Polyamory, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-14 08:59:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7164566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent_florida/pseuds/2x2verse, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Makizushi/pseuds/Makizushi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You learned a long time ago never to give Vriska Serket a loan. She’s not the kind of girl who repays her debts—at least, not in currency."</p><p>--</p><p>John, Terezi, Dave, and Karkat have been together happily for years. Vriska ends up homeless, and they have a spare room in their house where she can stay for now. Poly adjustments ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE check chapter notes for individual summaries, any warnings, and author; tags to be added as needed.
> 
> [2x2verse's Tumblr](http://2x2verse.tumblr.com) \- [Tsunamayo Makizushi's Tumblr](http://tsunamayo-makizushi.tumblr.com)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR: 2x2verse  
> TAGS: n/a  
> SUMMERY: rip in pieces, pairing tags

John always feels so lovely pressed up against you in bed. His arm over your waist is warm and heavy, and he’s curled into your side even as you have your back against the mattress; your legs are draped over the fold of his. Maybe his end-of-day stubble is a little scratchy against your cheek when he nuzzles at you, but other than that, this is heaven. After a long day of handshakes and arms-length negotiations, carefully-crafted sentences and citing to authorities, what’s better than this kind of up-close-and-personal contact? “Long day, huh,” he says to you.

When you turn your head, his eyes come into focus first. Piercing blue. The rest of his face is a watercolor blur, shades of skin with a black smear at the top, but his eyes ground you when nothing else will. Even being able to see this much is a blessing, you know, and you never want to take it for granted. To see the rest of him, you reach out a hand, run fingertips along his temple, his cheekbone. Tracing his features, as if you hadn’t already memorized them. “Not really,” you admit to John. “Just… hard.”

“I didn’t think you were going to trial for a while.” Behind him, past the rest of the room and the wall on the far side, in the next room over, you can faintly hear another couple having a conversation like this: hushed, warm, tired.

“I’m not,” you tell him. “And no hearings for the rest of the week—don’t, berry pie, I know you’re looking at me that way, I don’t need to be wearing my glasses to tell you’re pouting. Work is _fine_.”

“Something’s bothering you, though.” As though he could protect you from the mystery problem, he draws you closer to him with his hand at your hip, braces his arm around you like it holds a shield.

You take a deep breath, yawn it out. The two in the other room echo your voice with their own sighs. “Vriska’s homeless,” you mention offhandedly, hand muffling your mouth.

You feel, rather than see, John blinking at you. “What.”

“Vriska called me,” you amend your previous statement.

She called your work number and made fun of the clipped way you picked up once the call was transferred to your line. You were on the phone with her for maybe two and a half hours, praying that there wasn’t something criminal involved like the last time she contacted you out of the blue, but no, nothing like that came out. No, she just detailed her life and where she’d been for the past fifteen months and how she can’t find a job and she’s soooooooo behind on her rent and about to get evicted in two weeks if she can’t pay her utility bills. And there was something about an Etsy store, and eBay auctions, but you never took her to be much of an artist, so you’re not sure what that’s all about.

Every time you tried to get off the phone with her, she always seemed to find another story to tell. When she got really desperate to keep you on the line, she’d ask you how you were. And so she found out about John, and about Dave, and about Karkat, and about the big job in the big firm in the big city for the big clients, and she told you about her escapades with them that you’ve already heard half a dozen times but somehow seem to get more embellished with every retread. The same old Vriska, after all these years. Talking with her felt like being a teenager again, young and wild and free from responsibility, and you still can’t figure out why your hands were shaking after you hung up.

John doesn’t seem to want to let this go. He has to draw away from you to prop himself up on an elbow. “Vriska’s _homeless_?” It’s punctuated by a yelp from the other room.

“I know you don’t like her much,” you smooth it over. Vriska never did get along with Karkat, even when all of you were kids, and you’re not sure she’s even met Dave, but with John? With John, there’s history. She’s accused him of stealing you from her, of changing you to the point where you stopped taking pride in your blindness, and he fought back, told her to her face that she was dangerous and had some really fucked up ways of getting what she wanted. And that was after you introduced the two of them in college and they started being such close friends, too. You know he regrets some of the things he said, and you know she’s still hurting from it, but you’re not sure if that’s a breach that can be mended.

“That’s not it—I didn’t know my facial expressions were audible—but seriously, this is _Vriska_ we’re talking about,” John reminds you, and he has a point. She tends to… get in trouble. “Did she call you on your cell phone, or on your—”

Another weird noise from the next room over. “Work phone,” you finish his sentence. “I didn’t recognize the number, and when I realized it was her, I guess I was just thankful she wasn’t using her one phone call to do it.”

“Yeah,” John admits. “Yeah, that’s true. It could be worse. But seriously, she’s being evicted? Where’s she living now?”

“I thought she was still living with Rose and Kanaya, but when I brought that up she said they treated her pretty bad. You… probably don’t want to hear it,” you realize. Making your husband pick sides over this is a shitty thing to do. “So she stayed with somebody else for a while until she could get her own place, I think Equius maybe? I don’t remember who she said, and she got her own place a few months ago, but then money dried up and her job went with it and now she’s just trying to start over.”

“What did she want from you?” is John’s next question.

A shouted, clipped “fuck!” comes from next door. It might as well have come from your own brain, because John’s right. Vriska never makes contact unless it’s in her best interest. “I think she just wanted to catch up,” you tell him. “Maybe she called to ask me for money, but the most I offered was to take her out to lunch, and I won’t have time for a while.” You learned a long time ago never to give Vriska Serket a loan. She’s not the kind of girl who repays her debts—at least, not in currency. “I told her that if she was looking for a couch to surf, the decision wasn’t up to just me, and she—” Berated you for having gone soft, being controlled by your husband, letting the men in your life walk all over you. “Didn’t like that answer,” is the way you put it.

“Well, it’s not up to just me, either,” John admits, smoothing over another expletive you can hear through the wall, “but it sounds like something we should all probably talk about.”

“What, about Vriska staying here?” You’re not sure how to feel about that. On the one hand, Vriska: your best friend through grade school, the one who never abandoned you when you made bad decisions, the girl you grew up with (and grew apart from). On the other hand, Vriska: tempestuous, impulsive, and demanding. “She’s changed,” you hear yourself rationalize out loud. “She’s not like she used to be. I know you had that blow-up fight with her in college, but she’s different now.”

“If she’s actually asking for help instead of just barging in, then yeah, I’d say so.” And that’s always been one of his main issues with her, hasn’t it? She used to have just this… lack of respect for boundaries: laws, rules, people, you name it. Not that _John_ , of all people, is a hundred percent about following the rules at all times—that’s _your_ job, after all, literally laying down the law—but he does have a thing about respect and showing it.

John’s breathing isn’t the only metronome in the room: the couple on the other side of the wall are making the bed let out creaking noises, even a jostle every now and then. “We have that spare room, right?” he mentions.

“I guess so.” Three bedrooms for four people, paired off two by two, and no one’s been in the doghouse for a while, though sometimes you all dogpile onto the one mattress and stay tangled in each other from sunset to sunrise. And it’s not just the mattress in the second bedroom that’s moaning and groaning, it’s Dave and Karkat. God, you want to know what they’re up to, it makes your skin prickle just _thinking_ about how pretty they are together, your apple tart and cherry sour.

John can tell. Or, well, he sees your forearms break out into goosebumps, and he smooths a large, warm hand down your arm. “Hey, I’ll be right back,” he promises you.

“Where are you going?”

“Nowhere,” but turns from the waist and starts to roll over in bed. It makes the sheets fall off of him and holy fuck is he ever gorgeous in the half-light of the room. Soft light cuts into his pecs, his abs, making his front seem like it goes on forever, a sensual blur of skin.

At first you’re sure he’s about to turn the light out so the two of you can properly sleep, but he reaches further than that, has to turn over all the way with his back facing you so he can grope for something on the floor. He grabs—something, chucks it at the wall, and it isn’t until it makes a loud _thud_ and falls to the carpet that you realize he just threw a shoe at your boyfriends. “ _Shut up,_ ” he yells in that perfect loving but long-suffering tone.

“Fuck you,” Karkat shouts, layered over Dave’s snarky “make me,” and then there’s a shove and the headframe bangs against the wall and both of them are saying “ _shit!_ ” and you and John are both laughing and they’re moaning and everything is perfect.

Now John turns the light out. Finally. You’ve always felt better this way, when he’s just as blind as you are. Yeah, he needs vision correction, but he’s not legally blind, and he hasn’t needed seven surgeries just to get to that lesser level of disabled. At first he acts like he’s going to turn over, but you put a hand on his waist. “Don’t,” you tell him. You like him like this, like being his big spoon even though you’re so much smaller than him. Your smile curls against his shoulderblade and your hand sneaks around his front to pet at his trail.

“You’ve got a weird thing for my spine, lady,” but he shivers when you kiss the knot that ties neck to torso. And even though you know he’s half-hard—listening to two people he loves giving each other some truly crazy orgasms always gets to him, especially with how loud they can get—he catches your fingers in his, redirects your palm so it hovers right above his heart. “Not tonight,” he says softly.

“Hmm,” you let out, pressing your cheek against his back instead and scooting closer until your body takes up the same divot his does. “Too bad.”

“Wanna—” a pause for a dramatic yawn—“be able to walk tomorrow.”

“That was _one time_ ,” you mumble into the pillow with as much outrage as you can muster for how bone-tired you are. As much as you want to lose yourself in his body and peg him silly, you also want to be awake enough to appreciate how amazing he is.

“Five,” he corrects you, and brings your hand to his mouth. “One,” kissing your pointer finger, “two, three,” middle and ring in turn, “four, five,” pinky, thumb, and then a more lingering smear of his lips at the pulse point of the inside of your wrist. You concede the point by not saying anything in return, but you’re both right: one session, five times you made him crest. You were so proud of him, and you know he wants to outdo himself for you—but it’d probably be better when he’s well-rested. “Love you, sweetness.”

“See you in the morning,” you promise him, and close your eyes, dark on dark.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BY: 2x2verse  
> TAGS: no explicit sex, but enough sex mentions that it's NSFW  
> SUMMARY: i'm like 110% sure that these court metaphors are only funny to me. the clade has a family meeting.

You get home with two boxes of pizza in your hands, which apparently is an aphrodisiac in this household because Dave is instantly on you like butter on a hot biscuit. Working from home means he likes to pounce on you whenever you walk in from your job. “What toppings?”

“Pepperoni and jalapeno on one, and garbage on the other.”

“John Egbert,” he says very seriously, “you are my baby, my honey, and my ragtime gal, all in one.”

He kisses you right on the mouth. Or, well, tries to, since he has to drag you in by the collar of your button-down and you’re also laughing too hard to keep your lips on him proper. “You’re ridiculous,” you tell him affectionately. “Karkat’s not home yet?”

“He’s taking a shower.” There’s a thump from upstairs. “With Terezi.”

“She’s home early,” you comment as you make your way to the kitchen. “How dare they not include you.”

Dave leans in to whisper you a secret: “I ran them out of hot water like two hours ago.” It pins you with your ass against the kitchen table and his lips as close to your ear as he can manage, given he’s a little shorter than you.

“You are evil and perfect and I love you.” Your one hand still smells like pizza grease when you bring both up to frame Dave’s face, pull him away. He’s still wearing his shades. What a doofus. “Obviously we have to bang on the table to get their attention, right?”

Speaking of _bang_ , somebody probably just dropped the soap, because there’s a weak thud and then a skittering noise coming from above the downstairs half-bath—and then Karkat moaning, yeah, _absolutely_ dropped the soap. Probably on purpose. Some obnoxiously loud squealing noises, like wet skin on tile. Well, not just like. Precisely like, _exactly_ like, because you can visualize it now: Terezi with her one hand massaging out the kinks in Karkat’s neck and shoulders, bending him over with his forearms on the shower wall so her boobs are pressed all nice into his lower back, and getting two fingers inside him all at once.

You’re a little jealous. For the span of about five seconds, because then Dave’s pressing closer to you, running his teeth along your lower lip before he kisses you proper and planting his hands on either side of your ass so he has more leverage to rock his hips against you. He’s not hard, and neither are you, but it’s nice, and it could lead to something even better. “Egbert, you can’t stick your dick in the pizza,” comes out low and seductive.

 _Watch me,_ is your first thought, but you’ve learned—slowly, eventually—that voicing whatever first comes into your head isn’t exactly the smartest idea. So you go with your second thought instead: “Instructions unclear, dick stuck in pizza.”

“When you end up in the hospital with second degree burns on your pump-action jizz rifle, I am going to stand there and I am going to _laugh_ ,” Dave promises. He nuzzles into your face. Familiar, easy. When he kisses you he tastes kind of sweet and bitter at the same time: sugary when you lick at his upper lip, more complicated when you touch your tongue to his.

Just like what happens every time you start this shit, you can’t quite remember how to disconnect your faces. You push Dave’s shades into his hair and he lets you, crushing his body into yours as you try to figure out what the hell is going on in his mouth right now. Whatever it is, you can’t get enough of the taste, chasing it down and trying to get him to spill his secrets until—“Is that Terezi’s lipgloss?”

“Yup.”

“Aw, aren’t you sweet, hummingbird,” you coo at him, and he punches your shoulder. You deserved that. You’ll never stop calling him cutesy pet names, though, not when he blushes so delicately under the pale of his cheeks. His face is warm against yours, his breaths huffed short out of his nose, and he won’t stop drawing you deeper, stretching out these languorous, decadent kisses into something more intimate. And whatever’s salting his tongue makes you thirsty for every bit of contact he wants to give you. “The hell did you eat before I got home?” you accuse him.

“Three guesses,” he murmurs into your mouth, kissing you deep and slow again.

“You, uh.” Words. Falling out of your head because if there is one thing that can be crowned the Most Distracting Thing it is Dave Strider’s mouth and the way he uses it. Tugging at your bottom lip with his teeth until it snaps out, and like a rubber band you slingshot back to lip-on-lip contact because it’s the only thing that makes sense anymore. “You kinda taste like, um.”

“Hm?” Dave hums into your mouth before he pulls back. His eyebrows are quirking, daring you to voice your thoughts.

“Like Karkat,” you fumble over, but that’s not quite right and you know it even as you’re saying it.

Dave sighs, rolls his eyes at you. “First two don’t count, then.”

“Hot or cold?”

“Scorching, babe,” and he might be right about that because he’s pushing up the bottom hem of your shirt with freezing-cold summer-air-conditioning hands and your everything tightens in the wake of his fingers questing up.

“Mm, okay, so.” But then there’s the kissing. And the touching with the kissing. And the little shivery movement that runs through Dave’s bones when you take your hands away from the chaste contact at his face and grab at his ass instead so you can haul him against you. “Do I have to say it?”

“Absolutely.”

“Because it is kind of awkward if I have to tell you to your face that you taste like Karkat’s cum.”

Dave taps your nose and waggles his eyebrows. _Bingo._ “Wanna wash it out?”

“Somehow, I don’t think the soap’s gonna do it.” Not with the way Karkat’s full-throated bellow of a moan reverberates off the tile in the upstairs bathroom, Terezi’s cackles a garnish on top.

“With yours, you dumb-dumb,” Dave says seductively.

You have to laugh at that. “If you think you can get me off before they get downstairs, be my guest, but I’m kind of really hungry.” On cue, your stomach gives a massive unsexy gurgle.

“See, you shouldn’t have said that, hon,” Dave drawls out—the sex-voice he likes to try on like it might actually convince you to do him. “‘Cause when you say that, I hear _hungry for dick_.”

“Well, I mean hungry for pizza,” you clarify, fuck it smells so good and yet you still can’t remember how to disconnect your face from Dave’s once he starts kissing you again.

There’s a symphony as the backdrop for your makeouts, Karkat’s hoarse shouts of “oh, fuck, yes, _yes_ , Terezi, right there, yes, _fuck!_ ” ringing around the whole house by now and becoming the only thing your brain can process, yes, Dave, fuck yes, he tastes so good, _especially_ now that you know _what he tastes like_ , shit, so good, the way the tentative graze of his fingertips against your abs makes all of you tense, how even your skin feels hungry for him and everything he might could possibly give you.

Dave makes everything quiet. That’s part of what you love about him. It’s just that there’s so many parts of him to love, and never enough time in the world to cherish him like he deserves. He helps you listen to what’s important, and he’s home when you’re homesick, and he’s the melody when you whistle and the wind beneath your wings. Dave is your personal cliche. It’s not just that you love him, although how could you not? It’s that he’s _more_ , he’s trust and comfort and strength.

Of course, with your tongue this far past his teeth, you’re not thinking any of these things in any kind of coherent fashion; they’re just making your nerves hum with silent anticipation. Dave makes a quiet sort of _yes_ noise into the silence he settles over you, which pings basically everything you’ve got, and he pushes himself to you like he could phase into you, become your left side like you need him to be.

This is when Terezi whoops like it’s Christmas morning and she just ran downstairs to find that the shiniest present underneath the tree has her name on it.

Great. You’re putting on a show for the other two in this relationship. Dave, as always, drinks up the attention, and if it makes him happy, well then, you guess you can put up with it. “Lights, camera, action,” he purrs at you.

“Please,” you say right back, “it’s pronounced _we’ve got company_.”

Karkat facepalms for all of you. “Must you?” he says hoarsely. “Right here? In the kitchen? Where we make our food? That’s where we _eat_ , Dave.”

Dave rarely laughs. This one is a treasure, one you get to taste right against your lips. “Let’s make some hot yaois, onii-san,” he murmurs.

Terezi claps, like this is her personal entertainment. The only slapping sound coming out of Karkat, though, is his other palm against his face. “Okay, time out for the assholes making out on top of my dinner. Those assholes are you.”

“I’m hurt,” Dave insists, putting on a theatrical pout. “Wounded, even. Cockhead, how could you. Leave me out in the cold in the shower I started—” (“You were the one who ran us out of hot water!” Karkat insists, but Dave keeps talking over him,) “—and now you’re trying to cockblock me. How dare you.”

“John,” Karkat grumbles from behind his hands, “a little help here, please, your husband is being horrible.”

You have to laugh at that. “Haha, no. I am pretty sure that your marriage license says that when he’s being a little shit, he’s _your_ husband.” And yeah, all four of you did the big dress up and party thing with your friends where you got four-way married in front of everyone you knew, but Terezi is your actual, literal, piece-of-paper, registered-with-the-county legal spouse, and Karkat and Dave were the brave idiots who got courthouse married like a year out of college. So, yeah. Technically? You’re right.

Karkat takes umbrage, though. “Well, if you want to play _that_ game, by hot-potato rules, you fucking touched him last, so take him, he’s yours.”

“Are you calling my husband a potato?” you gasp in mock-outrage.

“Fuck yeah,” Dave says, needling you on. “I am the _hottest_ goddamn popato any of y’all ever did see.”

“How can you let him impugn your honor like this, Dave?” Terezi asks, leaning into the boy-puddle you and Dave have made against the kitchen table and opening the pizza box so she can grab her dinner.

“Well, I let him come in my mouth earlier, impugning my honor is _nothing_ compared to that.” At first, you think Dave’s hugging you, but no. No, of course not. It’s pizza time, and he’s reaching around you for a paper plate, shades falling back down on his face.

Which leaves you with a half-hearted boner, a Karkat simultaneously staring at you angrily and trying not to burst out laughing, and a very empty stomach.

From there it’s the casual shuffle of paper plates and pizza slices, people yelling for napkins and raiding every drawer because you can never find where you put the damn things, chairs shuffling, you raiding the fridge for sodas, grabbing a beer for yourself because why were you the last person home today? Whatever, you earned it, and it goes great with pizza. And this is going to be a Family Meeting anyway, so you may as well use the social lube for its intended purpose.

It’s not until everyone’s pulled their paper towels off the roll (because fuck napkins, seriously, you might be married but that doesn’t mean you have your shit perfectly together) and Dave and Karkat are shoveling folded-up slices into their mouths that you casually say, “So, Vriska.”

“Vriska,” Terezi agrees.

Dave keeps chewing. Karkat, on the other hand, freezes. Which makes sense to you, in a weird way. He dated Terezi back when they went to high school together, which means he knows Vriska in a way you never will: he watched her grow up, same as Terezi did, except maybe without Terezi’s Serket-shaped blind spot in his judgment. (Which is probably the worst way to put it, because Vriska might actually be the reason why Terezi’s vision got as bad as it did so quickly, but you’re kind of an asshole and everybody at this table knows it.) “Vriska?” Karkat asks.

You look at Terezi. She pins you down with her eyes, wide and piercing behind her specialized lenses. There’s an entire berating rant hidden back there, but it basically boils down to _you start it, you finish it,_ and you did start it, so she has a point. But that doesn’t mean you’re having this conversation alone. “Rez told me she talked to Vriska yesterday, and uh. Vriska’s homeless.”

“Huh,” Dave says with his mouth full. “Scho?”

Karkat, on the other hand, isn’t quite so relaxed. His hand drops back down to the table, his pizza flopping on his grease-soaked paper plate. “What the fuck.”

What he’s really asking is _how did this happen_ , and this is the part you don’t really remember. Terezi kind of told you while you were falling asleep? And she was the one who was on the phone with her erstwhile best friend, so now it’s your turn to give her a Meaningful Glance so she speaks up. And boy, does she ever. This is her jury-argument tone, the one she’s practiced in front of a mirror for years so she could get it just right. “She’s trying to start her own business,” Terezi says. “She’s been putting it together since she was living with Rose and Kanaya.”

“Can we not,” Dave pipes in before he fills his mouth with pizza again. You don’t blame him. He and Karkat have been… well, you don’t exactly know what the right word is for how they talk about it. But Kanaya was Karkat’s best friend in high school, and Rose is Dave’s twin sister, and when they broke up, they went full-on nuclear and caught everyone they could with their radioactive fallout. Which was, and is, really weird to all of you, because you’re pretty sure everyone at this table thought Rosemary would be together forever. (Yes, you even had a ship name for them, courtesy of one Mister Vantas.) But it won’t get any more weird than for Dave and Karkat. It’s still too tender for them to talk about--not just that it means taking sides, but that it means acknowledging that even a dyad as strong as theirs might one day collapse in on itself and create a black hole that sucks in all their other loved ones, too.

Karkat looks to Dave. “We’re not,” he reassures him, then looks at you, raising an eyebrow, are we? You nod. “We’re not,” he says again, “we’re talking about Vriska.” He spits it out like it leaves a bad taste in his mouth, or maybe it’s just the jalapeno he hacks onto his plate.

“She was staying with Equius,” Terezi keeps explaining. “And then she got some assistance, and got into housing of her own, only now she’s doing a little too well with her Etsy store and she doesn’t qualify anymore.”

“She can’t appeal?” Dave asks with his mouth full again.

“Stop that,” you tell him, “you’ll aspirate your dinner.” You really need to stop doing that, yourself--every time you chide Dave, your voice comes out sounding more and more like your dad’s. It’s a little disturbing. What’s even more disturbing is the places your brain tries to take you when you try to reason out _why_ Dave knows to ask _that_ particular question.

“She tried,” Terezi reassures him. “Twice. She even asked for my help, but honestly? Fuck if I know anything about government benefits law. And I told her that, and I don’t think she liked that answer, but it was that or malpractice on her. And she can’t afford anyone else. So she’s getting evicted in two weeks.”

“First of the month,” Karkat muses. “Where is she going to go?”

“Well, um,” you start out with.

“No,” Karkat cuts over you immediately. “No, no, absolutely not.”

You’re about to reach over and put your hand over his as a mode of reassurance, but Dave gets there before you can. “Calm your tits, ragequit,” he says affectionately, leaning on Karkat hard with his elbow, “let Razzles do her little court speech and then we’ll all decide based on the evidence and our house rules, all right?”

“I love you so much,” Terezi tells him.

“You two are gross. Take it to the bedroom.”

“You fuckin’ betcha,” Dave murmurs, pulling down his shades and waggling his eyebrows at his girlfriend-wife-polymate.

It’s Karkat’s turn to elbow Dave right back, only this time, it ends with a loud ‘ow!’ from Dave, because Karkat’s job as a physical therapist leaves him with way too much knowledge of everyone’s physical weak points. “Focus, dickhead, or we’ll never get past this.”

“So, what I know right now is,” Terezi keeps trucking on, “Vriska is being evicted two Thursdays from now. She has an LLC—she sent me the paperwork, John,” like she knows you were about to interrupt her and ask for hard evidence, “do you want me to recess to Bates label it or can I keep talking?”

“I just want to see it, is all.” Not like you’d be able to understand it, but it’d be something, at least.

“And I did an asset search and due diligence and everything, this is a legitimate entity registered with the Secretary of State,” Terezi says next, to which Karkat shuts his mouth. “She only set it up three or four months ago, so she doesn’t quite have quarterly or yearly statements—and once again, fuck if I know corporate law, but Mom might know someone who can tell me whether her projections are reasonable. It all checked out to me, and it’s a simple enough business, she just needs a place to live while she gets it off the ground. And that’s the other thing I know, is that we have a spare room.”

“ _Spare_ ,” Karkat says disparagingly. “Three bedrooms for four people? That’s not a spare, that’s _still_ not enough.”

“Nobody’s had to stay in that room for months, though.” You’ve all been pretty good about behaving, and when people get grounded they go sleep on the couch now. Oh no, anything but the couch, in the room with the TV and the Netflix and the room right next to the kitchen with all its tasty snacks. And the old blanket worn just right so there’s a thick area right up by your shoulders and a thin area over your toes. Oh no. Not that. Anything but that. “And we ought to keep it that way.”

Karkat still seems ruffled. “Once she gets here, she’s just going to _Vriska_ all over again,” he mutters darkly into his pizza.

“I don’t know,” you point out to him. “She’s actually asking for help this time around.” Karkat’s face stays just as sour, but his shoulders slump a little. Small victory. “And Terezi’s really checked this thing out. She’s trying to do things the right way, and we sorta-kinda have our shit together. She can stay with us for a little while until she can really get her business thriving, right?”

Karkat snorts. “So long as you and Rezi are vouching for her,” _and keeping her in line,_ you hear, “I don’t have a problem with her being a short-term sublease.”

“Sublease?” Dave butts in. “What kind of tight-sphinctered asshole _are_ you?” And he’s speaking from experience. If he’d owed you or your dad rent when he started staying at your house, he’d still be digging his way out. “I’m fine with whatever, by the way.”

“You’re the one who’s home all day,” Terezi reminds him. “And since she’s doing Etsy artsy stuff, she’s probably going to be home all day, too.”

“And?” Dave asks rhetorically, taking another bite of pizza. Really doesn’t mind, then. Good for him. He’s really loosened up about people being in his personal space, and you’re kind of proud of him for that. You just hope Vriska doesn’t ruin this forward progress.

“So,” Terezi says, and steeples her greasy fingers, peering at the three of you in turn. “Should we put it to a vote, or is it a unanimous verdict?”

“Um, excusche you, I’m foreman here,” and bits of pepperoni come out of Dave’s mouth while he talks. He’s so gross, why do you love him so much? “All in favor?”

“If we’re doing the court metaphor thing, I would like to put my hesitance on the record,” but Karkat gives and says “aye” anyway.

“Aye,” you and Terezi state simultaneously.

“The motion carries,” Dave announces, and Terezi winces. “What? That’s a courtroom thing, right?”

“No, apple tart, we’ve talked about this,” and Dave’s usual brash exterior crumbles a little bit. You know he likes to mix his metaphors deliberately, not accidentally, and slipping up like this means he just pleaded out of a courtroom roleplay and into a cop-detainee roleplay later tonight. “This is a verdict, not a motion. Is there any reason why judgment should not be rendered on the verdict?”

“Counsel for plaintiffs states no objection and foregoes polling the jury,” you recite. You had to go through the brunt of this while Terezi finished up law school, and unlike _some_ grumps at this table, you don’t have a problem playing along.

“Same,” Karkat says, “now can I just eat my goddamn junk food in peace? I can’t believe I let this in my house, by the way,” he tells you.

“This is my reward for drinking that kale abomination you made me on Tuesday morning,” is your retort, and you finish your crust with aplomb. “Seriously—and I can say this to your face, you left a real bad taste in Dave’s mouth earlier—that green swill is the worst thing of yours that I have ever swallowed.”

Karkat looks at you, expressionless, but his eyes are glinting with wickedness. “I could always wash that out of your mouth for you.”

Terezi cackles. “Lewd! I like it.”

“You’re busy with a suspect later,” you remind her on Dave’s behalf. “No butting in on mediation efforts.”

“But when you settle after mediation it means I don’t get to oversee the trial,” she pouts.

“You also prefer it when two-party cases settle, because any less than three is wasting the court’s time.”

“And I am always one for preserving the court’s resources so that everyone get equal access to justice,” she purrs.

“I’m not sure whether I’m horny or bored,” Dave says.

“Welcome to three straight years of my life,” you tell him. “I came down on the sexy side of things eventually.”

“Which is why you talk fluent law nerd now,” Karkat grouses.

“And fluent P2P. You’re like the nerd whisperer,” Dave points out, then belches.

“You’re welcome,” because that’s his way of saying thank you for the pizza. “And good thing I am, because I have the three of you to deal with.”

Karkat throws the roll of paper towels at you and beans you square in the temple and Terezi punches your shoulder. Totally worth it. They might be nerds, but they’re _your_ nerds, and the four of you always balance _just_ right at the end of the day. Easy, comfortable, familiar, and utterly wonderful. You’re not sure it gets more perfect than pizza on a Friday night with the three people you love the most, just one of those everyday events that reminds you of just how lucky you are. Nothing can ruin this. _Nobody_ can ruin this. And the best thing is, Vriska’s changed so much, you think she knows better than to even _try_.


End file.
